Wonderful post. I have to admit I'm not a big reader of non-fiction but in high school history was one of my favorite classes and a lot of my favorite teachers were my history teachers. I do on occasion delve into magazine articles and have been known to marathon the history channel on occasion.

I always thought my grade 8 history teacher summed it up very nicely when a fellow student told her that he didn't see the point of studying history and she turned to him and asked him....
"How can you really know where you're going to, if you don't know where you came from?"

Thanks. My grade 8 history teacher was one of those teachers who the memory of them stays with you your entire life. I'm 57 years old and I would honestly say that of all my teachers she made the strongest impression on me.

I love history. Let's face it, the subject is so vast that there should be something for everyone! I like stories about ordinary people who get caught up in major events, it makes me take a good look at myself. What would I have done in that situation? Would I have been as brave as these people?

^THIS! I don't know why school history is (was) so defined by the battles that have been fought, but it's a surefire way of boring kids out of any interest in history.

I didn't become interested in history until University, where history classes were much more focused on what caused the wars in the first place. I didn't start reading history until I found books that hooked cultures into history. The British Museum's "100 Objects that Changed the World" was a bit of a gateway book for me. :)

Same here - all my history teachers (except one) were fantastic. I loved history despite and outside of school, tho. One of the first adult books I read was a biography of Heinrich Schliemann and his re-discovery of Troy.

Outside of school I was fascinated with the archaeology going on at Knossos, and that's history, of course. But in school, it was year after year of always starting with the American Revolution and never getting past the Civil War and it was ALWAYS about the battles. Except for freshman year in high school, when we had to take "world cultures" - which should have been really interesting, but it was taught by our football coach. A nice man, but not academically bent (although he had a great 'current events' quiz-game every Friday that we LOVED!)

Ah, yeah, I can see why that my not have sparked that much interest. We started with the stone age in 5th grade and worked our way through the ancient world (Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome) through to European history in 7th or 8th grade and finally settling on German history in 9th with more world history thrown in from 10th onwards as no regional history exists in isolation.

For non fiction lovers....Here are some titles I highly recommend...
.Lucky 666: The Impossible Mission by Bob Drury
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Bike Path Rapist by Jeff Schober